Playing Dirty: A Bad Boy Sports Romance

by Mickey Miller

  The realization hit me that moving to Chicago for this internship was perhaps one of the only big life decisions I had ever made in spite of the counsel of my mother.

  Amy must have sensed my discomfort, because she changed the subject. “Okay, so this is going to test the waters of our friendship.” Her eyes flashed in a way that told me something was about to come out of the vault, that place where people only go after a couple of drinks. “I’ve been meaning to get something off my chest.”

  “By all means.” I shrugged as the waitress brought out two more margaritas after our appetizers were half gone. I was feeling a pretty good buzz already, so I had decided this would be my last.

  Amy continued. “I’ve been seeing this guy, David, who I knew from college, and this weekend we slept together for the first time.” She leaned in and lowered her voice to a whisper. “The penis reveal always makes me a little nervous.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I nodded overenthusiastically. In my head, I cycled through the two real penises I had seen in my life. My college boyfriend, and, well, the one I had seen Saturday afternoon. “I definitely know what you’re talking about. How was it?”

  “It was surprisingly good! Oh, that sounds a little judgmental and weird. David seemed like more of a nice guy—I mean, he used to be my friend in college. I never thought he would be as skilled as he was…” She paused, making a face. “Is this a weird conversation? Oh God, you don’t think I’m weird do you? We’re two of the only girls in the office, and ever since you started, I’ve been dying for some girl talk.”

  “Not weird at all. You should listen to some of the conversations my softball friends and I have,” I continued, wanting to keep the conversation about her as much as possible. Anything to not talk about me. “So, you get nervous when you have the first hook-up…”

  “Yeah! Exactly.” Amy spoke loudly, earning us a couple curious looks from the table behind her. “You know, there is all this weird sexual tension, and you’re thinking, are you attracted to the guy, is he attracted to you, are you going to have good sexual chemistry? It’s all so stressful.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Oh yeah. Gets me every time,” I said, wondering if Amy would catch the irony in my voice. The two times it has happened to me.

  “Yeah, and then, like I said, the unit reveal. It’s always a little weird, but is it going to be big, small, just right? A ‘Goldilocks’ penis, maybe? And not to mention, is the guy going to be attentive, good at going down on me, and does he think two minutes of fingering constitutes foreplay? God, I’m sorry. I’m rambling. Shoot. I’ll stop.” Amy blushed, which made me smile.

  “It’s okay. I like your stream of consciousness rants. It gives me a window into your subconscious.”

  “Well, let’s talk about you. What about your sex life? You’re a gorgeous twenty-something from Tennessee. With that sweet hint of a drawl, I bet you get all the guys. You’re probably fighting them off with a ten-foot pole. Have you been on dates with any Chicago guys yet?”

  It was a little embarrassing, but dating just wasn’t something that had been on my mind. I hadn’t taken the time to put an online dating profile together, and most of the guys I met in real life were either too shy to talk to me or intimidated by me. “No,” I answered, and I didn’t elaborate.

  “Oh. So you haven’t had any recent…reveals?”

  I swallowed hard and thought about the reveal I had seen.

  “Well, if you are just talking pure sexy man.” I leaned toward her. “I saw Jake Napleton’s...you know…Saturday. Mr. Yerac was insistent that I go to the locker room and meet Jake right away. And there he was, just all hanging out.”

  Amy had just taken a big gulp of margarita, and she went into a choking fit.

  “You okay?” I asked, my fears coming to fruition. Now we were talking about me, my least favorite topic.

  She took a minute and cleared her throat, and finally, her coughing ceased. “So you’re telling me that you saw Jake Napleton’s unit?”

  “Uh huh,” I said, nodding and recalling the glimpse I had of him. Not that everything below the waist was the only highlight—his abs had been just as spectacular. Now, all I was doing was picturing him naked.

  A chill went over my entire body. How could a man make me feel this way when he wasn’t even in the same room? I felt blood rushing between my thighs. The more I tried to suppress the feeling, the more intense it became.

  Amy eventually recovered from choking on her margarita, and now, there was a devious look in her eyes that told me she was just warming up. “So… I have to ask...does the nickname hold true? Is he really The Big Unit?”

  I took a sip of my margarita and stared into the slow-flowing water of the Chicago River. I turned my head back to Amy and nodded slowly. Not like I had a ton of units to reference, but there was no doubt about this one.

  “Whatever you’re picturing, it’s probably bigger.”

  She put her hand on her heart, shook her head in disbelief, and did an exaggerated swoon. “Dear Lord in heaven, help the woman who actually gets him to settle down.”

  I laughed out loud. “Fat chance of that happening. For any girl.”

  “Yeah, he’s got unlimited options,” she said, agreeing with me.

  “He wanted to take me out to dinner on Saturday.” I slanted her a look. “A business dinner.”

  Amy’s jaw dropped. “And…?!”

  “It sounded like he wanted more than a business dinner. I’m trying to be a professional, not have a one-night stand with some charming playboy athlete.”

  “Christ,” she said, fanning herself. “You’re stronger than me. If Jake asked me on a date… I mean, damn. You have one strong will, Diggers.”

  I sunk back in my chair. I had always been the one with a strong will. The one who tried to do the right thing and never compromise on my own set of rules and standards, but now I wondered if I was denying myself new experiences.

  “Maybe I should go to dinner with him…” I said, tentatively, and glanced over at Amy. “A professional dinner, of course. I’ll make that clear.”

  “Of course you will,” Amy returned, almost deadpan. Then she laughed. “And then you can tell me all about it! I’ve always wanted to live vicariously through a girl dating a professional baseball player.”

  “It’s not a date!” I exclaimed, but I smiled. “We’re keeping it professional. Remember?”

  Amy rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah. I forgot that already. I was lost picturing Jake’s…you know what? I’m going to stop talking. My advice is to just enjoy it—stop worrying so much about the destination, and enjoy the journey.”

  I smiled, nodded, and took a sip of my drink. She was right, but not in the way she thought. I needed to get this right, and not just to avoid getting fired. I wanted a career in sports PR, and Jake could open doors for me if I could turn his image around. Steve was right—I’m tenacious. That’s how I got the internship. I needed to remember that Jake was just a client.

  I pulled out my phone from my purse and went through my contact list. From his team dossier, I had his full contact information, and I’d put it all in my phone. Just in case. I fired off an email to Jake, which felt more businesslike than a text or actually talking to him on the phone before I knew what I wanted to say.

  I could definitely keep this professional, no problem. Besides, one horrible experience from dating a baseball player had been traumatic enough, and an excellent reminder to never go down that road again. No matter how tempted I might be.

  “Strike one,” the umpire huffed after I blew a fastball by Grant Newman. He was so frozen he didn’t swing, even though it was right down the middle. I couldn’t help but smirk. I loved striking out this son-of-a-bitch more than anyone in the world.

  There was a lot of hullaballoo surrounding us because we were both number one draft picks. Personally, I wouldn’t have even taken the guy in the tenth round. I didn’t understand how he was supposedly in the running for Rookie of the Year. He was a class-A phony
.

  Today, I was only half focused on Grant, and I still had his number. Even during a Tuesday afternoon game in an anticipated match-up against the New Jersey Bulldogs, my mind kept wandering to a certain girl. She’d held her own in the locker room full of guys like she’d done it a hundred times, and I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Sometimes, you just know there is a spark with someone. And with Andrea Diggers, I’d felt this incredible chemistry. I couldn’t define it even as I fought it a little. I even found her business-focused emails cute. Was it pheromones? Chemicals in the air? She was beautiful, yet delicate and strong. I truly didn’t understand how a girl so tough on the field could be so feminine and graceful off it. When I’d seen her from behind in the locker room, it was everything I could do to not to get an insta-boner. I mean, I didn’t care that she saw me naked, but it was a little early in our relationship for me to show her the full package.

  Then she’d turned me down. That was an anomaly that had stuck with me. Every night I went out in the city, I would literally have girls walking up to me, handing me their phone numbers. And yet, Andrea was all I could think about, even when I shouldn’t be, like during the middle of a game. I smirked, thinking that not one person in the crowd of forty thousand would consider the dirty thoughts swimming in my mind.

  Dwayne, my catcher, threw the ball back to me, and my focus immediately zeroed in on the asshole next to him eying me and attempting the most menacing snarl he could muster. Personally, I thought he looked like Pudge from The Sandlot. I wiped the sweat from my brow and stared him down.

  Newman was a rookie and a decent talent, that was sure, but he was also a punk-ass pretty boy who didn’t give a shit about his teammates. He was all about stat-padding, swinging for the fences even in situations where that was the last thing he should have been doing. Fuck, I might be a lot of things, but every single one of my teammates was like a brother to me. I had their backs, and they all knew it.

  I nodded at Dwayne’s signal and threw the next pitch. As I expected, Newman whiffed badly on a curveball that was low and outside. The crowd cheered.

  “You better wipe that smirk off your face,” Newman shouted at me. He kicked a little dirt toward my catcher in a gesture that got my adrenaline rocking.

  What a bitch.

  I sneered at him. He shouldn’t be talking shit after I had just put two strikes past him.

  “If you can actually hit a ball, Newman, I might consider it,” I shouted back, taking a few steps forward as Dwayne tossed the ball back to me. I caught it, walked back to the mound, and eyed him down again.

  Newman had a classic swollen body type; he had power, but not much skill. Me, I wasn’t the most jacked guy on the team by any stretch of the imagination. I wasn’t all ‘roided up like some of these guys and trying to overcompensate. My workout plan was about being long, lean, and flexible, not about bench pressing a million fucking pounds.

  Apparently, what I was doing was working, because the next pitch I threw was a cutter that made Newman look like a blind man trying to swing at a fastball. The pitch was up and in, and he missed it by at least a foot. He swung so hard he probably altered the flight patterns of the geese that were flying overhead.

  Once again, I took a few steps forward so he could hear me perfectly. “Christ, Newman, you ever hit a ball? I know you just graduated from tee-ball recently, but I think even my sister would have hit one by now. Maybe if I threw it in slo-mo, you’d have better luck?”

  I gave a wink as Dwayne started whooping and laughing his ass off. Even the umpire couldn’t resist a cough-laugh from behind his mask, but he made a warning gesture for me to stop delaying.

  Newman’s expression was priceless. “All right, that’s fucking it!” he screamed, definitely on the verge of a ‘roid rage.

  “Come and get me, you little bitch,” I taunted, unimpressed.

  He threw his bat down and rushed the mound.

  The crowd roared as he neared me, dukes up like he was about to throw down. Dwayne and the umpire were right behind Newman. In my peripheral vision, I could see the other umpires and the rest of the team on the field rushing toward us.

  “You’re going down, you smug prick,” he growled. He attempted to punch me, but I jumped out of the way at the last second and used his own momentum to push him into the dirt on the mound, belly first.

  The crowd exploded. I jumped on top of him for a second and pushed his face in the dirt.

  Seconds later, the benches cleared, and our teams were mixing it up. Dwayne pulled me off Newman.

  “Jesus, man, you didn’t have to kill him, just dodge him.” Dwayne shook his head at me.

  “That motherfucker had it coming.” If we weren’t on the field, I would have done a lot more than just shove his face in the ground.

  I wasn’t too surprised when the umpire kicked me out of the game. As I walked off the field, I looked over at the Jaguars’ dugout, at my teammates having a good laugh and still settling down to finish the game. I didn’t overthink the looks from the coaches, whose expressions were stark and glaring. I shrugged it off, the adrenaline still pumping through me. The crowd was still going wild, the replay running on the jumbotron in case anyone missed it.

  I headed back through the tunnel leading into the locker room. Fans reached down, trying to get me to sign stuff or shout whatever at me, but I kept my head down and forward. Whatever, fuck it, we already had a 7-0 lead. Granted, it was the bottom of the sixth and a lot of game left, but we had the best record in our division. Even if we lost, the Jaguars would still be on top.

  Because I felt like it, I protested in my pitching coach’s office just inside the locker room, but Don wasn’t buying it as I pleaded my case. He’d been waiting for me, sitting on one of the plastic chairs along the wall, all quiet-like and hands rolling up the bill of his ball cap when I’d walked passed. I should have seen it as the warning it was.

  “Oh come on, Don!” I said, rolling my eyes. Why was everyone freaking out? Fights in a game weren’t unusual. “Newman was being an asshat! He kept kicking dirt at Dwayne. And he’s the one that charged me! What was I supposed to do, just stand there and take it like his bitch?”

  Don did not see eye to eye with me, which was surprising, because he was more of an old-school guy, and usually those types were all about a good scrap once in a while.

  “Violence is never the answer,” he said, almost like he’d read it off a note card.

  “Who are you, Don? Buddha? I mean shit, the guy outweighs me by like forty pounds. If Newman had connected, he could have done damage. What I did out there was self-defense.”

  Don massaged his forehead with his thumb and forefinger. God love him, he wanted to side with me, but something was holding him back.

  “Coach—”

  “Goddammit Jake!” he exploded, his tanned face getting red. “You don’t get it, do you! You’re on thin fucking ice! You could be up for a big suspension. Think about the bigger picture for once. Lost endorsements. Yerac could toss you on your ass, and no one wants a thug ballplayer anymore. You gotta clean up your act! You gotta stop with these antics, reacting before you think shit through. Be the better man. Newman is a rookie, he doesn’t know any better. You’re in your fourth year in the big leagues now.”

  I rolled my eyes again, because this was such bullshit. For a second I thought about Tate and what he’d said last Saturday. I thought about why Andrea was brought in—to clean up my act. Because I was perceived as a…thug? I shrugged that off, too. “You think I give a shit about lost endorsements? Fuck, I’d rather have my honor than a bucket of money any day. And Newman deserved a lot worse than some dirt in his face. Maybe he’ll see the ball better next time?” Just saying his name ratcheted up my anger. “He’s the dirty player, the real thug, and we all know it. Admit it.”

  “You just refuse to get it, Jake. And that’ll be your downfall.” Don shook his head and pointed at the door without even looking at me. “Get out of my office.”

 
I sighed and left. He knew the game well, but Don didn’t always back his players, and I couldn’t understand it. Every single one of the other twenty-four players in the locker room knew I had their backs. The baseball season was a 162-game war, and if I wasn’t loyal to them, then I was nothing. Disrespecting one of them was the same as disrespecting me.

  One of the things I always promised myself was being myself and not giving a shit about the opinions of others. I am who I am. Could I control my image a little better? Yeah, I could, but why did people have to take everything I did out of context? I did drink, but I didn’t get out-of-control drunk. I knew my limits, especially if I had practice or a game the next day. My job wasn’t a job—I loved baseball with all my heart but not much else outside of it. The press, the image, me being put into a box. Baseball was my life. It’s all I had. It was who I am. Anyone taking that away from me, threatening that, well, they were the real enemy.

  Since I’d been kicked out of the game in the sixth inning, I had another hour to kill before the game was over. I took off my baseball uniform and threw on some shorts and a tank to blow off some steam in the weight room. Often, on my pitching days, I worked legs after the game was over, so today, I’d just take care of that early.

  The weight room was completely empty, so I cranked my favorite AC/DC mix before I set the squat rack up. Every once in a while, I checked how we were doing on one of the TV flat-screens. Hugo, one of our best relief pitchers, was doing rather well, and that was reassuring. He wasn’t always the most consistent, but he was on fire tonight.

  Forty-five minutes later, I was about halfway through my leg routine. I was singing, “I’m on the highway to hell,” at the top of my lungs when I heard the door at the other end of the room bang shut. I looked over at the door but didn’t see anything. That’s when I heard a voice behind me that made the blood rush straight to one particular piece of my anatomy.